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The best hero is a dead hero

There’s little question that the majority of people consider those who join the military to be heroes.

Millions will click a “like” button on Facebook or elsewhere to declare that they “Support the troops“, probably on the basis that they “defend are freedoms” or some other similarly grammatically and logically questionable sentiment. The media lays down a constant barrage of hero worship, making it very clear to one and all that regardless of your low social status, dubious personal characteristics or lack of educational achievement, the nation will adore and respect you if you would just sign up to go abroad to shoot brown people.

It must come as a shock then, when returning from active duty and finally leaving the military “are heros” discover the reality.

A third of all homeless people living on the streets on any particular day are veterans, sun, rain, sleet or snow, with as many as 800,000 experiencing homelessness at some point during any given year.

As tragic as this situation undoubtedly is, providing more help for veterans would cost money and let’s face it, US taxpayers didn’t spend trillions of dollars sending hundreds of thousands of troops to 800 military bases in over 60 different countries around the world at a cost of almost $1,000 per US citizen, just to then adopt a socialist “big government” system to support them on their return. Hell no!

Dead heroes, on the other hand, are far less troublesome.

Besides giving them a decent send off with all the appropriate fan-fare, and mowing the grass over their graves, they require very little to no further support. Their images are frozen in time, never ageing, untarnished human monuments to the glory of war.

They don’t wake up screaming in the night having re-lived being blown up by an IED, or shooting some young boy in Fallujah on the off chance that he might be an insurgent.

They don’t hang around the families they once were part of, in an estranged and distant reverie of haunting memories and psychoactive drugs.

Thanks for your feedback. The title is deliberately provocative in order to highlight the shallow hypocrisy of those who flaunt their “support of the troops” as a badge of honor, who cry and hide their complicity behind a flag as the bodies return from the battlefield, only then to sneer and step over the homeless man in the street who only months before they were declaring a hero.